Agricultural sustainability can be defined as the ability of a system to maintain stable levels of production and quality in the long term without compromising economic profitability or the environment. The conservation of soil quality is fundamental to agricultural sustainability. The soil provides, amongst other things, a substrate for plant anchorage, a buffered supply of essential mineral elements and water, a repository for carbon, a reservoir of functional biodiversity, and a filter for reducing the pollution of air and water by agrochemicals. This is the second special issue on soil management for sustainable agriculture. It comprises ten papers describing (1) the preservation of soil organic matter and the phytoavailability of essential mineral elements in soils through the recycling of organic residues to agricultural land, (2) the effects of agricultural management on the accumulation of potentially toxic mineral elements in soils and plants, (3) agricultural practices that reduce losses of organic carbon and nitrogen from soils, restrict soil erosion, and maintain agricultural productivity, and (4) agronomic strategies to manipulate soil chemistry to reduce the abundance of problematical weeds.
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White et al. (2014) studied this question.